


head and tail

by wombuttress



Series: CHOOSE [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:31:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6463162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wombuttress/pseuds/wombuttress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>side a: Tabris never wanted this (she was born for it)</p><p>side b: Cousland ached all her life for this (she can't do it, she can't, she can't)</p><p>CHOOSE: a stalwart noble warrior//a dark and rogueish elf</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rising

**Author's Note:**

> viv loves gimmicks: The Fic

**1\. role**

_side a_

“Call me Tabris.” Her parents had chosen _Alrian_ , for a boy, but it fit a girl just as well, and for years she’s been content with it. But now that the woman who’d given her that name is dead, cut down by the shems, she decides it is much too soft. _Alrian_ is beautiful and round, sitting in your mouth like a delicate pastry, shimmering in the air like a soap bubble.

But Tabris is not delicate, beautiful or soft. She’s never been. She’s been a hard, sharp girl, and now she is a harder, sharper woman. _Tabris_ is a name like a snakebite, like a slap. That, she knows, suits her better.

To her father she is _my girl._ To Shianni and Soris she is _cousin._ To everyone else she is Tabris. Which is just as well. Without Adaia, Tabris as the oldest must take up the mantle of breadwinner. She now carries the family name in its entirety.

She quits her job at the palace as a serving girl. There are better ways of earning money.

Soon they will call her by another name.

_side b_

“Call me Gwen.” She says it, again and again, to every noble and bann and arl she has to greet over and over again, at her mother’s endless parties and events. She doesn’t complain, though. She loves her family, and is proud to do them honor, but she doesn’t want to be Lady Cousland. She’s not, yet—that’s her mother—but they keep calling her that anyway. Lady Cousland, whoever she is, is someone who has nothing to do with her.

Please, she says, increasingly desperate. Call me Gwen. Just Gwen. I’m Gwen. Not Gwenivere. Not Gwen Cousland. Not Lady Gwen.

  _Gwen._

She isn’t even the elder child, she thinks unhappily, sipping wine in the beautiful dress that grips her too tight and sits awkwardly on her muscled, broad-shouldered frame. Fergus is so much better at these things. She doesn’t see any necessity in keeping her here at Highever when she could be anywhere else.

But she loves her family. She will be what they wish her to be, to the best of her ability. She was born to do this.

 

**2\. rendezvous**

_side a_

It’s been a good couple weeks. She’s lifted enough from the Denerim mansions to keep her family fed for a long while yet. She tells her father she is doing well at her job as a serving girl, taking extra hours and additional duties, that the shem mistress is kind and generous. The words are acid in her mouth, but she doesn’t want him to worry.

Soris knows, and worries. Shianni knows, and takes her for drinks

They giggle quietly in the tavern over drinks. Nobody pays them any mind—they’re only elves. So that is how they overhear the conversation. One upper-class merchant, bent over his ale, muttering unhappily to his cohorts about the _Dark Wolf._ Why, he says, just the other day, he made off with an entire stock of lyrium, in broad daylight! No, the guards have no idea. Not a trace, no. It’s as though he’s made of mist.

Tabris looks at Shianni, breathless. _Dark Wolf,_ she mouths, grinning wildly, teeth bright in the darkness. Shianni grins back, but shushes her, ducking her head as though this will finally be the thing that gets her caught. Shit, it might be—if she’s so notorious now that her  heists have gotten her a nickname.

But Tabris doesn’t care about that. She’s drunk on the thrill of notoriety, and also on wine. She jerks her head towards the exit. It was time to get some ill-advised tattoos.

On the way out, she grabs the badly-disguised noblewoman pretending to be a commoner and kisses her full on the mouth, just because she can, because she’s pretty sure they won’t catch her. Cackling, she dashes out of the tavern, Shianni shouting breathlessly behind her.

She was born to do this.              

_side b_

It’s been a bad couple of weeks. Endless events, endless suitors, endless expectations. One day, Gwen risks it. She put together her best commoner disguise and sneaks out to the tavern.

She’s never been here before. She's keenly aware of how out of place she looks, now that she's here. She’s huge and pale and suddenly realizing that her commoner disguise is painfully thin. Even her idea of what rough, common clothes are like are far too fine to blend in.

But she had wanted to try this. At least once. Just to see what it was like.

She sits down at the bar, orders an ale. She has no idea what it’s supposed to cost. When the barkeep asks for three coppers, she hands him a silver—the smallest denomination she’d brought. The man gives her a Look, and she colors, wondering how badly she’s miss-stepped. But he gives her the drink.

 

She sits at the bar and sips the sour ale, watching the people around her. People are huddled close together, talking and laughing, and she is alone. One of the men at the low tables smacks the serving girl’s backside, and Gwen colors. She shouldn’t have drawn attention to herself by staring. The man catches her gaze and grins. She looks away, but too late—he’s already coming over to her.

Gwen smiles nervously, politely, the way her mother had taught her to smile at men even when you didn’t like them. But this one seemed to take it as an invitation. In the court, there are a hundred possible ways to deal with this—none of which she is good at, and none of which would apply here. “Uh,” she says.

Suddenly the man is shoved out of the way by a young elven woman—who, quite unexpectedly, kisses her. Gwen is too stunned to even watch her and her friend leave. Had…had that been on purpose?

She can’t spare the time to think about it. She leaves her stack of change on the counter and flees before the man, swearing and getting up off the ground, can turn his attention to her again.

When she makes it back to the estate, it’s the deepest night, and her face is red. What a mess. She’s never going outside ever again.

 

**3\. runaway**

_side a_

Her father wishes her to marry. Tabris agrees immediately. Her father is old and weary and wishes only to see his only daughter—his last remnant of Adaia—be happy. Tabris will not tell him that marriage will bring her no joy. She will nod and smile, and she will marry whoever he has chosen. She will agree to put down her blades, to end her midnight sojourns, to settle down.

She will do none of this, of course. And Cyrion knows it. But she will bow her head and promise him she’ll try, to set his heart at ease.

As the date approaches, she regrets it, a little. She jokes about running away with Soris, finding the Dalish. Soris, panicked, a year younger, looks like he might be serious. Tabris knows he never would, though. He was never bold. Tabris may be bold, but Tabris would never leave her people.

_side b_

Her mother wishes her to marry. Gwen panics. Words are spilling from her lips before she can stop them.  “No, mother, please, I don’t want to, I _don’t want to.”_

Eleanor jerks back, slightly shocked by the ferocity of her objection. “No one’s going to force you,” she says gently. “Marry when you feel ready, dear. Whenever that day comes.”

Gwen doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the day will never come. She can’t imagine being a person whose heart does not rise up into her throat in fear and anxiety at the thought of ever being married. If she ever became that person, she supposed she would not be herself anymore.

It takes her hours to fully calm down. Every time she gets close to stopping her stallion heart, she starts thinking again of the chains of holy matrimony, of managing a young lord’s estate, of bearing children. And then the panic starts again.

She talks to Ser Gilmore about running away. He agrees jokingly, but Gwen is serious. If only she weren’t so useless and naïve, she could do it. If he came with her, she could do it. Leaving her family would be frightening, but if only she could manage it—then, then she would be free.

 

**4\. refusal**

_side a_

When the dark-bearded shem appears in their midst, Tabris, on the morning of her wedding, is in just bad enough a mood to stab him, if only because it would get her mind off the afternoon’s event.

She doesn’t, really, but she’ll snap at him as though she will. Just to keep them on their toes.

He talks in his mild voice to her of congratulations and wardens, and she taps her foot and waits for him to leave until he mentions her mother. That gives her the slightest pause.

Adaia had died only two years ago. To think she might have left long ago, and avoided the stupid— _unfair, unjust, awful—_ death she got…

Probably only to die as a Warden, Tabris thinks bitterly, for ungrateful shems who would know nothing of her sacrifice.

She tells the shem something rude and turns her back.

Being a Warden like her mother wanted. Ridiculous. It would require leaving the alienage, and Tabris would never, ever do that. Tabris doesn’t have much of a future, but the scraps of the one she does have are behind the walls.

_side b_

Gwen chatters excitedly to the Warden-Commander when he comes to visit. She wants to know everything about the Wardens. Everything! The Wardens were the most legendary heroes there were. Ending Blights, upon the backs of griffons, bedecked in silverite…Gwen’s heart beats faster at the thought of it.

It is only her father’s horrified disapproval that takes the wind out of her sails.

Of course she would never be permitted to be a warden, Gwen thinks gloomily, kicking herself for her absurd, hopeful stupidity. For a moment, it almost seemed like she had a way out. What a thing to think. Ridiculous.

But Gwen has trained as a warrior since she was young. She is stronger and faster and better than all her father’s warriors. She can easily swing a blade some men can’t even lift. She’s phenomenal. She could have been a great and noble hero, glorious and true.

If she hadn’t been born a Cousland.

But she is one. And as long as her parents live, she will never, ever scape it.

 

**5\. rise**

_side a_

There is blood everywhere. It stains her white dress in spatters and splotches, it covers her stolen blades like a scabbard. When the shem tries to speak to her, she nearly really does stab him—it’s only Soris that prevents her from finishing the attempt. Shianni has been taken home, shivering. It’s only her father that sees her now, in her state of abject fury and disrepair.

She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t look at anyone. There’s a chunk of her nose missing, from the fight with Vaughan. It hurts, and won’t stop dripping blood on her ruined dress. Tabris ignores it.

She scowls at the ground as she accepts responsibility. Let them _try_ and execute her. Let them try and take the Dark Wolf.

But that isn’t what happens. The dark-skinned shem with the beard wants her for his wardens. Her instinct is to tell him to blow it out his ass. She is strong. She needs nothing from him.

But she remembers her mother, who had nearly been a warden. And her father is saying, very quietly: “Please, my girl. Live.”

“Fine,” she snarls. “I’ll go.”

The goodbyes are too fast, too soon. And then she is leaving, watching her only home recede in the distance over her shoulder.

She has never wanted to  leave. She loves her family. She loves her people. She would never abandon them, never betray them.

It is not relief she feels, as she watches Denerim disappear behind the horizon. It is _not._ How could it be?

(Somewhere, far away, a young woman stands ready to be slaughtered alongside her parents.)

 _side_ _b_

There is blood everywhere. It’s in her hair, all over her hands, staining her white nightgown. She’s never killed a man before. Oh, Maker. Oh, Andraste.

When the warden tries to speak to her, she can hardly hear him through the rushing of the blood in her ears, hardly see him through the tears in her eyes. What does she care for what he wants? She’s busy helping her father not bleed out.

Oh, Maker.

“Go with him, Gwen,” her father says quietly. Flower gives a soft, sad _boof._

Gwen protests. Gwen denies.  How could she have ever wished to leave them? How could she have ever thought such traitorous things? This was all her fault. All her fault for wanting to abandon them.

“No,” she says, over and over, “No, no, no.”

“Please, my girl,” her father says. “Live.”

She is sobbing, disintegrating. The warden is taking her away as she blubbers.

Weak. Pathetic. All her fault.

How could she?

(Somewhere, far away, a young woman is lead away to her execution.)

 

**6\. remainder**

_side a_

It’s a lot harder to be mean to Alistair when he’s sitting crying in the muck outside Flemeth's hut. It was sort of easy to forget that he was only twenty when she was always having to look up at him and watching him bash darkspawn in the face with his massive siheld.

She’d been unpleasant to him. And she doesn’t regret it, not at all! Smarmy golden shems like that ought to be taken down a peg, and she certainly doesn’t owe anyone her kindness, not when she isn't even here of her ownf ree well. But he looks less like a smarmy golden shem now and more like a kicked mabari pup.

“Look,” Tabris says, sitting down next to him in the peat. “I’m sorry.”

It’s awkward and grudging and she can just feel her inadequacy. His answering embrace is neither appreciated nor returned, and he pulls back quickly, red and rubbing the back of his head like a schoolboy.

She tells him not to apologize. If they’re stuck together, they’ll just have to learn to put up with each other somehow.

_side b_

From the first corny joke and shared grin, they’re the best of friends. Gwen is taller than Alistair—she’s taller than _everyone,_ except the ogres—but they fight well together, her with her greatsword, him with his shield. Gwen latches onto him instantly, the way she’s already latched tight to Flower. Her entire family is dead. All the other recruits are dead. And now that all the wardens are dead, too, they understand each other.

She spills her sad and ugly story almost immediately after the disaster. It pours out of her like water from a spout. She’s so desperate for someone, anyone. To not be alone in her grief. To not let him think that he is alone in his, either.

For the first time since that night, she feels…almost hopeful. The thought of her eventual, necessary revenge on Howe turns her stomach—but how could she not, after what he did? How could she not grant that peace to her murdered kin?

Now, at least, there is someone else. She is not alone.

 

**7\. rein**

_side a_

Tabris takes the reins of the operation the moment she can. She had lead them up the Tower of Ishal, and damned if she’s going to let some baby-faced golden-boy shem take the command away from her now that there are actual stakes involved. Luckily he doesn’t seem to want it, emphatically. Neither does Morrigan.

Well, good. As far as Tabris is concerned, she’s in charge. And everyone had better listen to her.

It is to her mild shock that they actually do.

Even after she starts waking everyone up at the asscrack of dawn with a loud “Hey, assholes! It’s morning!”

That, Tabris thinks, is the true mark of a leader.

_side b_

They look to Gwen. She doesn’t realize it’s her they’re looking at, until she realizes there’s no one else here they _could_ be looking at. She wags her head from side to side, horrified.

“No, no, no,” she says rapidly.

“Well, it shouldn’t be me,” Alistair says. “Bad things happen when I lead! Horrible, awful things.”

"And I am not even a Warden."

She whines unhappily as Morrigan snorts and Flemeth clucks. There’s no convincing them. She’s become The Leader.

Well, Alistair is just going to have to buck up and help her, because she sure as the Void isn’t doing this herself.

The mark of a true leader, Gwen thinks, is the ability to delegate.

 

**8\. rot**

_side a_

Tabris appreciates darkspawn. They’re horrible hideous monsters and she’s allowed— _expected—_ to kill them. On the road from Lothering, it seems every other hour they encounter a knot of them. Waves and waves  of them, ready to meet their Maker on the end of her blades.

It’s good. It’s satisfying. She can imagine they all have the Arl’s son’s face, and that she’s beheading him over and over again. She can imagine that the monsters are the shems in the streets of Denerim, calling her _rabbit_ and _knife-ear_ and spitting at her feet. She remembers their faces—every single one—and she imagines that she is paying them back.

It’s a good way to live, she decides, listening to Leliana and Morrigan bicker behind her as she cleans her blades in silence. Stab. Walk. Repeat.

The rest of wardenhood, she likes less. The hunger is alright—it’s voracious, but given how frequently she’s getting to eat, not nearly as bad as some weeks in her childhood. The dreams rankle her, and so do her frequent sweat-soaked wakings from them, for Alistair will inevitably reach out and attempt to offer comfort. It bothers her in some way she can’t express, and that rankles her, too.

Everything else, stopping the Blight, slaying the Archdemon—well, Tabris thinks she can handle that. She can do anything. She’ll damn well figure it out.

_side b_

Gwen hates everything about being a Warden almost immediately.

She hates the hunger. She’s never been this hungry in her life, and there never seems to be enough to eat. Knowing that it is an unnatural hunger born of blight and corruption makes it worse. And then she feels guilty for eating half the evening crock pot. But she always wants more.

The dream are worse still. She can’t make it through the night without waking at least once—and usually, twice or thrice. It happens so much she starts pretending to still be asleep, so as not to worry anyone. Or, well, Alistair. Morrigan off in her corner doesn’t care. But Alistair is always so concerned, and with all the loss he’s had recently—well, Gwen would rather suffer in silence.

But fighting darkspawn has got to be the worst, and the thought that this is now _her job_ makes her want to cry. They smell of rot and death and grin horribly at her, chomping and grinning with their awful teeth and misshapen mouths, even as she beheads one after the other.

Gwen had always liked sparring. Being a warrior seemed noble, even glorious. _Proper._ The one element of noble life she excelled at. But now that she really was a professional warrior, and not a noble brat sparring in the courtyard, she has no such illusions anymore. Killing anything, even monsters, turns her stomach, and having to kill innocent, desperate people inevitably leads her to vomiting in the bushes.

And whenever she thinks about her terrible duty, the burden of keeping the whole world safe, let alone her terrible duty to her murdered family—well, she just has to not think about it.


	2. romancing

**9\. reprieve**

_side a_

Tabris recruits the assassin for the same reason she recruited the Chantry sister and the Qunari—they are resources, and so is the Crow.  If she was to be a Warden, stopping the Blight at any cost, then working with an assassin was nothing.

Although, she already knew how to pick locks and steal things and pass unseen. She doubted she could _really_ use him for anything. She brings this up.

“How about a handsome elf to warm your bed?”

She smirks. “Maybe if you rub my back first.”

To tell the truth, it _is_ nice having another elf around. She’s tired of craning her neck to talk to people all the time. He tells very amusing stories about his failures to assassinate people, and rather sad stories about how he came to be an assassin at all. She can relate. He speaks of Antiva the way she feels about Denerim, with all its mud and wet dog smell.

They’re quite alike, she thinks. They’re nearly the same height, the same dark skin, fight with the same dual-bladed elegance—although hers is rather more violent, his more precise. They train together, learning from each other, until their fighting styles grow more and more similar. They both even have highly visible face tattoos—stark, black designs, nothing like the spindly Dalish vallaslin.

And he keeps offering a _massage,_ and she figures sooner or later the kinks in her neck will finally get the better of her and she’ll take him up on that offer.

_side b_

Gwen spares the Crow because of course she does. Why in the Maker’s light _wouldn’t_ she? So many conflicts where violence seemed inevitable—she’d killed six women and men in the fight with Zevran’s people alone—and now finally she was getting a choice. She practically sags in relief.

Oh, maybe it’s foolish. Maybe she’s risking her life, letting an _assassin_ of all things into the fold,but Gwen has always been a soft-hearted fool. Besides, she needs absolutely all the help she can get.

The only problem with Zevran—well, besides the obvious—and the semi-obvious—alright, so in _addition_ to Zevran’s many problems, she has no idea what to do about the things he says to her or the way his eyes rake over her. Surely he’s joking? She’s huge and awkward and covered in a shell of metal. Even her face is rather horsey and bug-eyed and pale as the moon. Her long dark hair is just about the only attractive thing about her, and surely a man like Zevran wouldn’t care about that?

Well, it makes her uncomfortable, that’s for certain.

Almost as uncomfortable, in fact, as the callous, casual way he speaks of his unspeakably horrible early life. She almost wants to scoop the tiny man up in her arms—which she was absolutely _not_ going to do, because he is an assassin who she had met just recently when he had tried to kill her, and besides, it would send the entirely wrong message.

**10\. rosidae**

_side a_

After Redcliffe, and that damn amulet of his—and the Fade, and that desperate dream of his—Tabris has to admit that things between her and Alistair are….different.

She’d always been the oldest, between her and Shianni and Soris. She’d always been the one taking care of them, even as she was getting them into trouble. So she has a protective side, so what? There’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, Soris’s hair sticks up in the front the same way that Alistair’s does. It’s perfectly natural for her to feel protective, even tender, even—

Well, it’s all perfectly natural.

Besides, his jokes are hilarious.

And they work well together. They’re the Wardens, the last Grey Wardens of Ferelden, the ones who have to take point when there’s darkspawn about. Of course she feels comfortable around him. If she can’t trust him to slam the Hurlock in the face with his shield as she shanks it in the kidneys, she can’t trust anything. He’s her constant companion, her…partner. Of course, unquestionably, she’s the leader. She does the talking, the deciding. But she’s not fooling herself about the nature of the partnership—and that _is_ what it is.

And then he gives her the stupid rose.

She listens, with mounting horror, firing off smarmy comments through her wild discomfort,  as he stumbles his way through what _very much sounds like a confession,_ and offers the dumb plant to her.

She takes it numbly, staring at it. It’s beautiful. She can’t think of a single thing to say. She’ll face an ogre thrice her height and stab its eyes out without flinching, but now she’s ready to panic.

He kisses her. She lets him. Almost certainly because she is too stunned to do anything else.

“I, uh,” she stutters out, clutching the stupid plant in her fist, its thorns drawing blood. “I have to go.”

She books it.

_side b_

As time goes on and the road goes long, Gwen’s dependence on Alistair increases—and his on hers. They’re practically playing hot-potato with the leadership role, deferring to each other until one of them finally makes a choice. It's practically always Gwen, though, who had at least had some training at Highever. Between co-leading, and being the ones to fight the darkspawn up close, and all those awful things happening in the Deep Roads that only another warden could fully understand (with that terrible music thrumming her in head, in her blood, impossible to ignore as the archdemon shrieks), they’ve grown together vines on a tree.

They joke by the fire. She helps with his nightly cooking duty. Not well, but she tries. They plan their routes, discuss what they’ll do for food that week.

It’s comfortable. It’s like she’s known him all her life, their closeness accelerated by trauma and horror. He’s the best friend she’s ever had.

When he gives her the rose, she doesn’t understand.

It’s certainly a nice gift. She’s given him nice things before, when she happens to find them and think he might enjoy having them. Gwen likes flowers just fine. She can plait it into her hair for a few days, maybe.

But he’s still talking. And saying…things. And Gwen is slowly, with growing horror, realizing.

“Oh, Alistair,” she says, her heart breaking. “Oh, no, I never meant any of it like that.”

Oh, she _hates_ that hurt, kicked-mabari look, she hates it so much. She keeps talking, trying to smooth it all over— _you’re like a brother to me—of course I love you, just not like that—you don’t want me, I’m weak and broken and not even beautiful—I’m sorry I’m so sorry I never meant to—this is all my fault._

Ugh, why did she ever think she could talk her way out of this? She couldn’t talk her way out of a paper bag. And now both of them are bright red and embarrassed and feeling awful. He looks away, hurt, regretful.

She books it.

 

**11\. rebound**

_side a_

For the next three days, Tabris can’t so much as look Alistair in the face. Well, she’d say, if anyone asked—which no one does—she happened not to need him for that time. After all, _she_ was the leader. So what if she decided that Sten was the more useful warrior for a particular venture? How dare they question her, of course she knew what she was doing!

Nobody does question her, though. Alistair’s gloomy countenance leaves him slightly less talkative than before, but the rest of her confusing group of friend-companions has plenty to say during his silence.

She keeps the rose in the bottom of her pack.

“My, you are looking _particularly_ stressed of late,” Zevran says.  “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Maybe I do mind,” Tabris just about snarls. “I’m not stressed, and if I am, it’s because I have a hard job. And it’s none of your business, anyway!”

Zevran chuckles, raising his hands in surrender. “Of course, of course. And even if you are, it has certainly had no affect on your beauty or prowess in battle—both formidable as ever.”

“You’re a stinking flatterer, Zev.”

“That I am, dear Warden.” He shuffles a step closer. “Are you certain you wouldn’t accept a massage? I know an excellent Antivan technique.”

It is with tremendous relief that Tabris nods brusquely and all but drags him back to her tent.

She had some idea that he intended to actually attempt a massage, but she doesn’t give him a chance. She doesn’t need sensuality or intimacy or any of that nonsense. They get right to the fucking.

And it’s a _good_ fucking. They are both young and athletic elves equipped to understand each other. Afterwards, Tabris rolls off, utterly spent.

“That was fun,” Zevran says cheerfully, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Yep,” Tabris agrees, lacing her fingers behind her head. “Just what I needed.”

“So…again?”

She rolls her eyes, ready to decline. But then her mind flashes to the rose, dying at the bottom of her pack, and suddenly changes her mind. “Again,” she agrees.

He chuckles. “Grey warden stamina is an amazing thing, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” she says, and proceeds to occupy his wagging tongue with other activities.

When they are finally done, there’s no tender embraces. Which is _fine._ It wasn’t as though she wanted or needed anything like that. He gets dressed, buckling on leather armor and fixing his hair.

“Well, what now?” she demands, gathering her thin blanket around her shoulders as her sweat cools and the cold night grows deeper.

He shrugs. “I shall not ask anything of you that you are not willing to give.”

“A good policy, when it comes to sex,” she says.

When he leaves, she mulls it over, and eventually, decides only what she already knew about herself. She was willing to give nothing to anyone, and that was that. There would be no second night.

_side b_

Alistair won’t even look at her now. It’s the worst. Just a few days ago they were an inseparable team, best friends…now some stupid misunderstanding has him too embarrassed to even look at her.

Embarassed? Oh, who is she kidding? He probably hates her now. And he’d be right to. She shouldn’t have let him think…shouldn’t have expected...

“Something the matter, dear warden?”

She glances up, startled. She’d been sharpening her sword, but not very efficiently. Mostly she’d been staring miserably at the ground. “Hi, Zev,” she says unhappily.

“Care to share your troubles?”

She gives him a watery smile. “It’s alright. It’s nothing.”

He smiles in return, and it is a different smile that his usual smirks and grins. It’s warmer. “Well, if I cannot justify my presence by easing your troubled heart, perhaps I can ease your weary back? I know many Antivan massage techniques.”

“You know what,” she says. “You’re right. My back’s _killing_ me. This huge armor and stupid sword are not meant for cross-country travel. Could you?”

“Of course. Let’s go to your tent.” He extends  a hand. It’s charming, even if he has absolutely no hope of actually helping her stand, considering the fact that she weighs twice as much as he does. She wonders, briefly, about why they need to go to her tent, but then quickly realizes she’d rather not strip down from her protective metal shell in front of everyone. Her body isn’t exactly appealing to look at.

Zevran really is wonderful with his hands. “You’re very kind,” she says, over and over again.

“Think nothing of it,” he replies, over and over.

“No one’s ever done this for me before,” she sighs. “It’s so nice. You’re so nice.”

Finally she’s sore only in the good way. She shoots him a grateful glance over her shoulder. He has the strangest expression on his face.

“You know, I have a confession to make,” he says, after a moment. “I fully intended on seducing you with that massage line. I rather thought I was being transparent.” He tsked. “But then one touch on your poor muscles had me concerned. Even your knots have knots.”

Slowly, his words penetrate her thick skull. The blush started somewhere in the region of her feet and spread rapidly upward until she was not so much a woman as an overripe tomato. “Oh, I, uhm.” She covers her face in her hands. “I’m very stupid about these things, aren’t I?”

“Not at all, dear warden,” he chuckles. “You are fearsome and beautiful, never doubt it. I shall not ask anything of you that you are not willing to give.”

She peeks out slightly from under her hands, still flaming red.

Zevran is very different from Alistair. He’s small, lithe, but by no means out of shape. The two men have nearly the same light shade of hair, but his is long and looks very different, brushing against his dark skin. She bites her lip.

“You know, no one’s ever done…you know, _that,_ for me, either. I kissed Ser Gilmore, once, but I don’t think I even did it right. It didn’t feel the way they talk about in songs.”

He arches an elegant eyebrow. “Ah, am I to understand that as an invitation to show you how to do it the _right_ way?”

Gwen wants to crawl out of her own skin, but not entirely in a bad way. “Well—I—uh…that is to say, I don’t—if you…uh…m-maybe? Yes? If you—want, I suppose—yes.”

The sex is, she’s pretty sure, terrible. Because _she’s_ terrible. No amount of experience or skill on his part can make up for her awkward overlong limbs. And she’s not even sure if they did do it the _right_ way because it still doesn’t seem to feel the way they say it does in songs.

But it’s…nice. And Zevran is nice, and kind, and warm, and a good person, whatever he says about himself, and…

And he’s making to leave already.

Oh, she realizes, with a sick sinking feeling. I’ve become one of _those_ girls. One that let’s herself get foolish over men who don’t love her.

“You won’t stay?” she says, pathetically. He pauses.

“Ah, for round two? Well, I certainly am not one to refuse a noble lady.”

It isn’t what Gwen means—she doesn’t _really_ want to embarrass herself a second time in front of such a man as Zevran—but she wants him to stay.

 

**12\. regard**

_side a_

Eventually it’s Leliana that convinces her to talk to Alistair again.

Tabris likes Leliana. Tabris likes all the strange and varied people she’s collected over the past months, very much.  It’s hard not to like someone when you’ve been on the run from darkspawn and assorted others together for all these months, when you can see all their endearing little habits and quirks.

(Of course, you can also see all their _irritating_ little habits and quirks, but Tabris functionally grew up with the entire alienage for a family. She can live with it.)

Tabris had gained herself a reputation as something of a silver-tongue. She had a Voice, one she used to great effect to achieve almost anything. She could talk her way out of or into practically any situation. Zevran had once joked about the possibility of simply persuading the Archdemon to go home and cancel the whole Blight.

Leliana, in comparison, used the primary persuasive technique of Pestering.

“Talk to him.”

“No.”

“Please talk to him?”

“No.”

“Talk to him!”

“Argh! _Fine!”_

When the four of them return to the camp, Leliana gives her a stern look. Tabris sighs and shuffles over to Alistair’s usual place by the fire. She glances over her shoulder. Leliana gives her an encouraging nod. Tabris sighs.

“So, uh,” she says. “Deep Roads tomorrow. Gonna need you. Darkspawn, y’know. Yeah. See you.”

He blinks at her, and slowly raises an eyebrow. “Right. Wouldn’t want the beasties getting the better of you without me.”

“Right.” She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “Anyway.”

She flees.

Leliana gives her a withering look mid-flight, but Tabris ignores it.

She won’t pretend it’s not awkward,  but his hair still sticks up in that stupid endearing way. And it’s the Frostbacks, it’s cold as the Void, he should really wear a cloak—so what if she throws one over him herself? And yes, so what if the Deep Roads are weeks and weeks of nothing but Alistair, the monomaniacal dwarf, and the not-particularly-talkative Shale? So what if she takes comfort in a familiar face? So what if the sight of the Archdemon in the Dead Trenches is—oh, not terrifying, Tabris has never been _terrified_ —but startling, overwhelming enough, that when he instinctively reaches for her hand, she instinctively holds it tight?

So what if it’s him that pulls her away when the blasted piece-of-shit shem guard won’t let her in to see her family, her family that think her dead? So what if the darkspawn-fucker shem guard is telling her that there have been _riots,_ and _purges,_ and a quarantine because of the _plague,_ and so what if it’s Alistair that’s holding her tight against him as she screams in rage? So what if she lets him?

So what if it’s his hand on her shoulder as the ghostly imprint of her near-sister stares at her and she near-crumples in guilt? So what if it’s him smiling encouragingly at her from across the chasm as his weight on the pressure plate is all that is holding her from falling into the abyss? So what if they’re passing through the fire together, both very naked, and _so bloody what_ if she’s blushing over it?

So what if there’s a second kiss? And a third, and Maker knows how many else? So what if everyone _knows,_ and are having the chuckle of a lifetime over it? So what if she’s charmed by his awkward, stumbling confession of desire? So what if she delights in being his first, of straddling him and holding him down and making him see stars with her skill? So what if every night after that is all the warmer, all the less frightening beside him?

So what if she l—so what if she cares for a shemlen?

It could have happened to anyone.

_side b_

Alistair starts talking to her again eventually.

Gwen is pretty sure it’s Leliana’s doing. It’s hard to tell, as the forest is full of the sounds of birds and beasts and rushing water, and all these things that Gwen has never truly seen before, but she _thinks_ that somewhere far behind her and Zevran, Leliana is pestering him to talk to her.

She doesn’t dare look back to see if it’s working.

But apparently it does, because it’s not too long after that that he’s back at it with the bad puns and the silly jokes. She has her best friend back. It's a huge (one of the several) weight lifted off her shoulders.

Surely he’s realized by now that she’s a terrible target for affections. Alistair is sweet, but he’s just like the kind of boy she’d have been expected to marry. Someone her mother—her throat closes tightly at the thought—would have picked.

But her mother is dead. They’re all dead, and Gwen is not. Much as she wishes otherwise, she is alive, and she can choose.

Zevran is so different. Nobody would have _ever_ picked Zevran for her.

Besides the very fact that he is elven, Zevran is…so exciting. The jewelry, the tattoos, the accent, the wild tales of adventure. He seems nearly something out of a tale.

And a man like Zevran will never, ever love her, and Gwen thinks this is just fine. Zevran likes sex, and Gwen likes Zevran. Sometimes after the sex he will stay with her, and she can run her fingers through his fine light hair as he tells her of all the wonderful adventures he’s had.

Besides, he is something to protect. It boggles her that anyone can fight wearing so little armor and using such tiny little blades, even if they are covered in poison. And him not being a warden and all…Well, putting her metal-encased body between him and a Hurlock is a worthy thing to do, though Gwen is starting to suspect that he is intentionally targeting everything that attacks her. Which is very sweet.

The closeness is good. The strangeness is good.

And he does not love her, and he will not. He offers her the moment. Gwen will take it.

Gwen finds that the moment fits her, anyhow. She is a girl with a ruined past and no future to speak of. The future laid out for her is gone. This new one, this one of darkness and blood and war, is so alien as to be unrecognizable. She cannot see herself in it.

When the Blight is over, she imagines she will simply disappear.

If she manages to stop the Blight at all.

Alistair is her fellow Warden, her partner, her terrible reminder of all the things she must be and must do. He is a man who understands duty and vengeance and honor. He is a man who believes she does, too.

Zevran makes her forget any of it even exists.

And he does not love her.

So what if he recites Antivan poetry for her by the firelight? He doesn’t mean it like that. So what if he does her hair for her—not like the servants used to, with the harsh and sudden yanking with painful pins against her scalp, but soft and so, so nice? She likes braiding his hair, too. So what if that’s become a morning ritual? It’s convenient, that’s all. So what if he tells her such heartbreaking details of his life that even Gwen realizes were meant for no ears but hers? So what if she wraps herself around him at night, in the best form of comfort she can attempt? So what if he calls her _amora?_

It means _beloved,_ but he doesn’t mean it liked that.

So what if she thinks of being loved, sometimes, and physically aches with the wanting of it? It’s not going to happen.

And it’s better that way. There is not enough left of Gwen to love. That Zevran bothers with her at all despite her…everything…is probably a matter of pure chance more than anything else.

It could have happened to anyone.


	3. resonating

**13\. rend**

_side a_

It all comes crashing down eventually.

Denerim is a nightmare. It starts with Arl Eamon’s declaration that Alistair must be king, and Tabris’s sour expression at the thought. It ends with Tabris finally coming home.

She walks through the ruined carcass of her home, her blades nearly falling from her numb fingers. She has wrought this, all of this. There’s a ringing in her ears, a pit of something dark and vile in the bottom of her stomach.

And then Zevran makes some flippant comment about the vhenadahl.

Before she even realizes she’s moving, her hand is forming into a fist and slamming him in the jaw. It’s to her credit that she drops the blades first. He goes down hard, dust flying around him.

“Not the time,” she hisses at him. She turns harshly away, picking up her blades, and continues through the horror show.

Her cousin’s joyful shrieks and fierce embraces barely reach her. Where’s my father, she asks. Where is he?

They tell her. It’s all she needs. The next few hours are nothing but red, red rage and the flow of blood and the dull thuds of body after decapitated body hitting the ground. But it’s not until she finally reaches the head slaver, and sees who they have in the cages, that she truly loses her mind.

At some point in the fight, long after the man is already dead, her shrieks have turned to sobs, and her hands are shaking and almost too slick with blood to even open the cage.

She almost feels a little girl again, in her father’s embrace, but the gore and blood that cover her near head-to-toe attest otherwise. She is a criminal and a violent murderer—and she is _glad._

Tabris is not softness. Tabris is not sweetness. Tabris is not a rare and beautiful thing in the darkness. Tabris _is_ the darkness. Tabris is bared teeth filed to points, Tabris is clawlike nails biting into clenched palms, Tabris is jagged sharpness and red stains.

Tabris is a fool to have ever forgotten it.

The anger does not abate when it is finally time to go. Her family wants her to stay. For dinner. To invite her friends. She can scrape together enough of herself to smile and nod and tell them she will, later. To tell them she loves them, that she will be back.

But the moment they are out of sight, the rage engulfs her, strips her of anything but the wild desire to destroy those responsible.

And her golden shem lover, he doesn’t understand, of course he doesn’t. How could he? He reaches out to comfort, to soothe. It’s all she has to not break his arm with the force of her rebuff.

“Don’t— _touch_ me—shem,” she says, and she is gone, disappearing into darkness as though she is part of it.

She is a part of it. She is the Dark Wolf of Denerim, and they will every single one of them _pay._

_side b_

Denerim is a nightmare.

The Landsmeet is almost upon them, and the Blight with it. Sooner now, rather than later, Gwen will have to rise and show her mettle.

She can’t imagine why Sten would have ever changed his mind about her. He’d been right the first time.  A pathetic facsimile of a warrior and leader—that’s her.

At least, she thinks, she’s not expected to be king, like poor Alistair. She can’t imagine a worse fate.

The worst part is that everyone here knows who she is. Bryce Cousland’s youngest, aren’t you? Eleanor’s girl. Fergus spoke well of you.

Each name is a blow, each spark of recognition in their eyes a lash from the whip. She clings tightly to Flower’s short fur and smiles tightly and nods.

And then there’s the run-in with Taliesen.

Every muscle in her body tightens as he speaks, convinced that Zevran will listen, that he’ll leave. Of course he will. Why wouldn’t he? He’s lost so much, and gained nothing but an inept, clinging lover. She resolves to run rather than fight him. She’ll run, away from this awful city, away from all of this.

Let Alistair handle it. Let him be king. Let them all just leave her _alone._

But Zevran does not listen, and he does not leave. They kill his ex-lover and friend like they have all killed so many before. Gwen is so, so tired of it.

But Zev has stayed by her, after all. Later, away from everything, he wipes away the tears that have not quite fallen from her eyes, tells her not to worry, _mi amora._ He has to reach up to do it. She’s so much taller than him.

She can tell she’s just about blubbering, telling him all about how much him staying means, how for a moment, she thought…

At least he doesn’t seem to mind it. There’s so much about her that he doesn’t mind. She ought to be grateful for that. She is, she is.

And he offers her a gift. Something that means a lot to him. Just as what she had done for him. The gold hoop looks lonely in her huge white hands.

Her ears were pierced once. When she had been thirteen, her mother had done them herself. It had hurt, and Gwen had cried, because she hadn’t wanted them. But she was already being sent so many fine earrings as gifts by other noble lords. She would have to wear them, at the next banquet or ball, to show her gratitude.

In the year they had traveled, the little holes had long since closed.

“My ears aren’t pierced,” is what she says.

“I can pierce them for you, if you wish it. Or simply put it on a chain for you, as a pendant?”

She looks away. “I’m not much one for jewelry.”

It’s a lie. She does like jewelry. The bright and gaudy kind, that don’t hurt to wear and don’t easily break. A little hoop in her ear would have done just fine. It would have even been a little rebellious, a little exciting.

But her mind flashes back to Alistair and his rose, his rare and beautiful thing in the darkness. She wonders if he would have loved her. Almost certainly—for a time, before he saw her for the weak thing she was.

She couldn’t take the rose, and she can’t take the earring.

And oh, Maker, now he’s angry with her. She watches him walk away numbly, dull-eyed. It’ll all be over soon. Perhaps this is just the beginning of it.

 

**14\. retribution**

_side a_

Tabris goes to the Arl of Denerim estate alone.

She is the Dark Wolf of Denerim. She is the knife in the shadows, the masked eyes glinting malevolently from around the corner, the terror of the filthy shem nobles who spat upon her.

It’s harder, fighting alone, now that she’s grown so used to a stalwart shield and a healing aura beside her. But she does not _need_ those things. She needs nothing and no one and she will give away nothing but death. They fall before her.

She cuts briefly through the dungeons. The last time she was here, she was a woman in white-stained-red, moving awkwardly in the restrictive fabric. There had been flowers in her hair, and cheap iron daggers in her hands. Now she is clad in drake-scale, and the steel in her hands is adamantium-hard. They will pay. They will _pay._

She enters through the dungeons, but finds Howe in his bed. Arl Howe, who was responsible, dies first, and worst. He is a wily rogue, and there’s a fight, but it’s not much use. He’s twitching on the ground, poisoned twelve times over, barely a minute into it. She lets the poison take him, rather than finish him off herself. She watches his agony, and grants him no relief. His guards, who enabled this and protected him, die next, and quicker.

They cannot touch her. She is the shadow, the void, the rage of the downtrodden.

It is a long time before her blood cools enough for her to risk returning to Arl Eamon’s estate. It is the dead of night. She peeks into Alistair’s room first, through the window. He’s there, awake, pacing. Waiting for her. She takes the long way round to avoid him.

Instead she goes to Oghren’s room. She doesn’t knock, and there’s no lock on the door. He’s awake, sharpening his axe, and drinking.

“Teach me how to fight like you,” she says.

He shakes his head.

“Why the fuck not!?”

The dwarf just sighs. “Have a seat, Warden.” He hands her the bottle. Garbolg’s Back Country Reserve. It tastes like death and burning, and Tabris takes several long pulls before wiping her mouth and sitting.

“Listen, Warden,” Oghren says. “I’m not going to teach you to be like me. You don’t want to be like me.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Maybe now you do. But in ten years, in twenty years? Bah.” He shakes his head again. “This anger, it’ll eat you alive. You think you can use it, tame it, point it at your enemies. But ye can’t. You feed it, it’ll grow, and the whole time it’ll be gnawing away at you. And then one day, you wake up, and you’ll be a pathetic waste of space, just like ole Oghren here.”

Tabris glares at the ground. “You’re not a pathetic waste of space.”

“Y’see? That right there, that’s why I won’t teach you how to fight like me.”

She takes another long pull on the bottle, and then flings it at the wall. It shatters, and it’s not enough. “Then what in the fucking Void do I do about it?!” She clutches her head. “It’s _already_ eating me alive.”

The old dwarf grunts. “Y’coulda saved the rest of that, y’know.” He passes the whetstone edge over the axe again. “Fact o’ the matter is…the drink calms it down, some. Makes things fuzzy. Less sharp. But you don’t wanna do that. It’ll make your hands shake. Turn your fancy spinning-blades type fighting into so much uselessness. Nah, you gotta stay sharp, kid. Make some kinda peace with yourself, so you don’t end up hurting anyone. You gotta live, and eventually, maybe you wake up and it’s not eating you so much anymore.”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

She snorts. “Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Oghren. Get some sleep, or whatever.”

She has her own quarters in the estate, though she’d been sleeping in Alistair’s. She hesitates by the door. She nearly opens it.

But she is a silent shadow, and no deaf shem ears can detect her if she does not wish it. She slinks to her own quarters.

Well, she should have damn well locked it. Not even an hour until Alistair is barging in.

She hasn’t slept. Of course not. “What?” she demands harshly.

“You disappeared!” he accuses.

She snorts. “Yes, so? How did you even know I was back?” She thinks, then curses. “Oh, it was Oghren, wasn’t it? That traitor.”

They argue. They didn’t argue, before. Before, they had a job to do, on the road, away from it all. Now, on the precipice, Tabris can suddenly find a thousand things to fight about.

“Well, what about the queen, then?” he finally demands.

Tabris blinks. She’d completely forgotten about the queen. “Wasn’t thinking about her.”

“Then what was the point—argh!” He runs his fingers through his hair. His stupid hair. He looks more tired than he should. “Did you really go through all the trouble of breaking into the estate, and not even accomplish the goal?”

She’d accomplished _her_ goal. What did anything else matter, now? “No one saw me. Whose still alive, anyway.”

“And when they find the corpses in the morning?”

She glares. “Fine, then! Let’s go! Get your shit and wake Morrigan. Let’s rescue the fucking queen, if you’re so concerned about her.” She storms out, not looking at him.

But it’s good that he’s so concerned about her, Tabris thinks. She can already see the end of the line. No queen will give up power, and Arl Eamon is determined to have a king instead. There’s exactly one easy solution there, and it does not include Tabris.

_side b_

Gwen goes to the Arl of Denerim’s estate with her closest friends surrounding her, with all the people left in the world who care for her, and still it does not feel like enough.

Howe is the Arl of Denerim now, and he is here, somewhere, in the castle. She has tried very hard not to think too much about this.

It has been nearly a year since he and his men have taken away the life Gwen had so callously wished to escape. She has never understood it. She has never understood the easy way men can kill. She can kill darkspawn—for Gwen is the daughter of the noble house of Cousland, and she is the greatest warrior her family has seen in generations—but they’re monsters. When she’s had to fight _people,_ it’s always been gut-wrenching. Gwen’s illusions of the nobility of war had been shattered a long time ago.

It’s a question she’s dwelt on more than any other. How could he _do_ such a thing? How can people possibly do such things? How can Gwen possibly be so ignorant that she does not understand?

Leliana says it is because she has a good heart. Gwen knows this to be false. Gwen has a coward heart. Even as she knows she has no choice but to take revenge on Howe to set her kin at ease in their graves, she doesn’t want to. She quails at the thought. She doesn’t want to face him at all, let alone kill him and whatever men he’s paying to die for him.

“He’ll deserve it,” Alistair tells her, “Just like you deserve your revenge. Like your family deserves peace.”

“I didn’t kill Marjolaine,” Leliana tells her. “I regretted it. I’ve lain awake since then, wondering if she’ll come back for me.” There is a certain coldness in her eyes.

“His death will be sweet,” Zevran tells her. “If any will ever be.”

She wants to believe them. She does believe them.

But when the man finally dies, she feels nothing but the same sick ill-ease she always feels. She feels nothing when she sees him, nothing when he sneers and lunges at her.  She fights him and kills him with the same battle-rushed numbness she has always fought and killed with. She’s not even sure if it’s her blow that finally kills him, or if it was Alistair’s, or a life-draining spell from Morrigan. At the end of it, he lies dead on the ground, as hundreds of others have before.

She should feel triumphant, cathartic. She should feel _something._

If she feels anything, it is hollowness, and confusion. She still doesn’t know why how he could have done such a thing. How he could order the deaths of children. And he is dead now, and will never tell her.

Father and Mother and Oriana and Oren and all their servants and friends and the small town of people who lived in their estate are dead, and will reap no satisfaction from this slaughter. If their souls are in the Fade, still watching, waiting to be released beyond…Gwen cannot see them. They do not speak to her. She is alone, or may as well be.

But at least it’s done. It’s over now. If Gwen drops dead tomorrow, at least this bloody business will be finished.

A cold comfort, but a comfort, nonetheless.

 

**15\. reflection**

_side a_

The second time through the dungeons, Tabris pays better attention. The first time—well, the second time—she had gone through here, she had stuck to the shadows, snuck past the guards, ignored everything. Now she burns with uncomfortable guilt, seeing all the horrors she had ignored. Not even ignored, but failed to notice completely.

She frees the prisoners, doles out health poultices and injury kits to those that need them. How she must seem to them, an impossible avenging spirit of Compassion.

But of course this is not true. Tabris is not compassion. She is not soft, she is not kind. Tabris is fury and fire and edges and points. This good that she is doing, this hope that she is creating, it is an illusion. It is no reflection of her heart.

Tabris is a violent murderer, and that’s all she’ll ever be. 

She nearly misses the last prisoner, because at first she mistakes her for a pile of rags. The prisoner sits at the very back corner of the very deepest cell, unmoving. Her eyes are open and glassy—dead, Tabris thinks at first—but then she sees the slight rise and fall of the prisoner’s chest.

She unlocks the cell door. The prisoner does not react. Tabris calls out to her. On the third time, the prisoner’s blank eyes flick to her.

“You can come out,” Tabris says gently. The prisoners gazes blankly.

She wears nothing but a bloody white shift. Even hunched into a ragged barefoot curl of pain and terror, she’s obviously quite tall. She must have been a great beauty once. Her waxy, stretched-thin skin must have once been pearlescent. Her ragged black tresses must have once shined and flowed. And her eyes, huge and round and blue even here in the depths of death and horror, would still be beautiful, did they not sit in the sockets of a skeleton.

Tabris tilts her head. She never forgets a face. Every shem that ever spit on her in the market, every guardsman that ever called her _knife-ear,_ every peasant in every spit-small village that she has ever helped, remain in her mind.

But this face is too wasted. Tabris cannot place it. “Don’t I know you?” she says, expecting no response.

She does not get one.

For a moment, Tabris is a year younger, here in that awful dress, unarmed and vulnerable. If Soris hadn’t come…if Duncan hadn’t been there to bail her out…

She asks one of the other prisoners to take the silent ghost out with them. They laugh. That one hasn’t spoken or moved of her own accord in near a year, they say. She’s already dead, they say.

Tabris’s eyes flash. _Take her anyway._

They take her.

Tabris, resplendent in blue, ascends.

 

_side b_

The blood is staining the cobbles, and Gwen is freeing prisoners. She wants desperately to do something good. Something _unambiguously_ good, and not something that was supposed to be good but felt terrible, which was the vast majority of everything Gwen had done for the past year.

If she must be a killer, let her at least be something good, too.

Wynne heals. Gwen distributes supplies. There’s a calm, a moment of peace.

“Hey, _shem.”_ The voice is harsh, like a saw on steel. It sounds unused. Gwen flinches, and her heart leaps into her throat—she’d missed one. Someone was still locked up, in the deepest darkest cell in the dungeons.

The elf is small and dark and dressed in ragged bloodstained white. Her knuckles are pale where they grip the bars. Her upper lip twitches. “You letting me out or what?”

Gwen nods feverishly, clumsily fitting the key into the lock. It’s rusting, working poorly.

The elf is a ruin. A chunk of her nose bridge is missing, gouged out and improperly healed. Her solid, blocky face has sunken. The masklike tattoos around her eyes make her look nothing short of terrifying. Her ears are unusually long and pointed and stick straight out from her head. One is ragged and torn, nearly missing.

But the worst of it is the woman’s eyes. They are black in the darkness, and would surely be just as black in broad daylight, and they are the feral, wild eyes of a woman too-long abused. The wildness only gets worse when the elf gets tired of Gwen’s clumsy fingers and reaches through the bars, and turns the key herself.

Gwen shrinks away, mumbling apologies. The door swings open, but when the prisoner tries to rise and leave, she wobbles. The cell is not large. She could have been in it for a very long time. Gwen instinctively reaches out to help, and the prisoner slaps her away with enough force to hurt. “Don’t touch me, _shem.”_

She seems to find her feet, stumbling out. She ignores the other prisoners, ignores the well-armed group of Wardens and Warden-associates, and disappears into the deepest shadows of the dungeon, melding into the darkness so well that Gwen loses sight of her immediately.

These are Howe’s dungeons. Gwen wonders if that might have been her own fate. Kept as a prize in the dungeons. If Duncan hadn’t been there…if she hadn’t simply died…

 She lets the elf go.

But now she is worried that she might have missed someone else. She has business above in the rest of the estate, but Gwen doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to kill a bunch of guards doing their jobs and she doesn’t want to move another step closer to the end.

Gwen, ghostly in silver, descends.


	4. resounding

**16\. redoubt**

_side a_

After they get through torturing her, they toss her naked into the cell with Alistair.

She lays face down on the floor for a moment, disoriented. She’d never been tortured before, not with such precision. It had been an entirely new and exciting experience. Suddenly, she feels something other than the fading pain and the cold floor—a warm hand on her back, soothing. A voice is saying something, but it might as well be nonsense. It’s nice to listen to, though.

After a while, she comes back to herself. She sucks in a breath of cold, damp air and pushes herself up onto hands and knees, lifting her head. Alistair doesn’t look much better than she does.

“Are you alright?”

“Fucking dandy.”

His slight flinch at her harsh words is almost identical to the one he’d had nearly a year ago, before they’d…before everything. A horrible feeling roils through her chest and gut that has nothing to do with the torture, and she ignores it.

She picks herself up and starts searching for some way to break out. She remembers the prisoner in the dungeons. She won’t let that be her.

“Dunno about you,” he says, “But I’m going to strangle Anora.”

Tabris says nothing. Anora is a clever snake who will do what it takes to survive and win. Tabris can understand that. She’s just the same way.

Anyway, it won’t do him any good to be strangling her, the way things are going to turn out. Tabris might not know anything about the machinations of shemlen politics, but she is clever, and she watches. And she’s known where this was going ever since Eamon revealed his plan. She concentrates on the break out.

The terrible problem of Alistair is that he makes jokes when tired or nervous or sad, and the jokes get progressively more awful the worse he feels. Right now, the jokes are very, very bad.

She doesn’t even know how the argument starts. Tabris tries and fails to pick the lock—of course she fails, she _has no lockpicks._ She gets angry. Alistair says something that she otherwise might have found charming, but right now just finds irritating. She snaps. He snaps back, in that stupid smarmy sarcastic voice.

And then there is _yelling,_ which is made significantly more uncomfortable with the fact that they are both naked—and possibly, sort of broken up, Tabris thinks with a vile clench of her heart—and there isn’t even an opportunity for one of them to storm off and calm down because they’re both locked in a cell, and Andraste’s tits, this is _ridiculous._

Tabris swears the guard is chuckling at them.

They end up both sitting cross legged on the floor, glaring at opposite walls of the cell.

“Well, now what?” Alistair says huffily. “Stay in here until they execute us?”

“Maybe Sten and Oghren will launch a rescue attempt by impersonating a pair of intrepid circus performers,” she snaps back.

He starts laughing at that, but quickly stifles it when he remembers that they’re angry with each other.

Tabris remains angry, but stuck in this metal box there is nothing for her anger to break against. She petulantly imagines that she’s been put in time out. Eventually she doesn’t have the energy to be angry anymore, and she finally takes the time to rest.

_side b_

After they get through torturing her, they throw her back in the cell with Alistair. Gwen is unconscious for most of this, but she remembers the torture, and then she finds herself drooling on the stone floor of a prison cell.

Alistair is there, concerned…and very naked. “You’re naked,” she mumbles in bleary astonishment.

“And you’re more elaborately dressed than the Queen of Antiva, I’m sure.”

It occurs to her that she, too, is naked. For a moment she is consumed by a full-body blush.

But then it simply fades. It’s only Alistair. Her best friend, despite it all. It wasn’t as though there was anything to be seen that hadn’t been already. There wasn’t much room for modesty  on the road.

They end up sitting back to back for warmth and support.

“Dunno about you,” he says, “But I’m going to strangle Anora.”

Gwen gives a weak chuckle. “Only if I get to hold her down while you do. Or maybe kick her.”

“Good plan. See, you’re the best at plans. That’s why you’re in charge.”

She grimaces. He had to remind her. “I’ve really messed this up now.”

“Oh, sure, it was all your fault. The same way you betrayed the Grey Wardens at Ostagar, and the way you lead an army of darkspawn to the surface, and the way you corrupted the Golden City in the first place.”

“Heh.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “But it really goes to show what sort of a leader I am. We’re both in prison.”

“In Fort Drakon, no less. Most heavily fortified place in Denerim.”

Gwen groans. “I’m _terrible.”_

“You’re really not, you know.”

He sounds like he really means it.

“So!” he says brightly. “How are we getting out?”

“Obviously, with my excellent lockpicking skills. And if those fail, with _your_ excellent lockpicking skills.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You can use me as a battering ram. See, you’re big and strong, and my head is rock-hard. It’ll definitely work.”

“Hmm, maybe, but this cell is pretty small. I might not have enough room.”

“Well, blast. Any other options?”

Gwen shrugs. “Wait for a rescue?”

A pause. “You’re kidding, right?”

She had been, but then she suddenly realizes that she really isn’t. She can’t see any easy way out. She’s been tortured. She’s exhausted. If sitting in a dank prison cell is the closest thing she’s going to get to a break, she’ll take it.

It’s pathetic, frankly, but oh well.

She leans back against Alistair. It might have been awkward, the same way everything about her is. But somehow she can find it within herself to laugh.

“Just picture it,” she says, snorting helplessly. “Wynne and Morrigan, disguised as Chantry sisters.”

They cackle over that for a while, and over a dozen other scenarios. It’s fun. It’s easy. It nearly makes the dungeon not quite a dungeon.

 

**17\. royalty**

_side a_

Tabris is in unwashed armor, and her hair is its usual mess. She bears the marks of torture and exhaustion.

Anora wears a simple, elegant dress, her hair arranged pristinely. Whatever marks she bears are expertly concealed with makeup.

But the look in her eye is familiar. It is the same one Tabris sees in the mirror. It is cold, and it calculates.

Tabris supposes that they can do business.

She pours the wine. She speaks with the Queen of Ferelden, all silver-tongued and graceful. She proposes a marriage.

It is, quite simply, the best thing to do. Tabris prides herself on making the best choices. After all, she is the leader of their little group for a reason. She is clever and cunning and she has ever been able to pick out the better path.

Oghren was right, Tabris decides. She will never achieve anything with rage and bluster. She is only a small elf, and she must be faster and cleverer than any human if she wishes to defeat them. To be fast and clever, she must be _controlled._

A clever, controlled elf is one that makes wise choices. A clever, controlled elf is one that wins. The Landsmeet is tomorrow.

Tabris intends to win.

_side b_

Gwen is in her shining Warden armor. Her hair has been rebraided and hangs neatly down her back, beside the Cousland blade. She is every inch a noble warrior, every inch a heroic Warden. Anora nearly looks plain beside her, with her simple dress and modest height.

Gwen has never felt more ungainly, more ill-fit, than standing next to Anora.

It’s as though the woman is scrutinizing her with every word, with every glance. Her gaze makes Gwen want to crawl out of her own skin.

Gwen has no mind or temperament for politics, but, she thinks, Anora will not give up her power quite so easily. But Alistair is the real heir, isn’t he?

Then again, she thinks guiltily, he doesn’t want the job.

Gwen hadn’t wanted the job, either. She hadn’t wanted noble duty, hadn’t wanted to live the life she’d been given, and then it had been taken away. Perhaps the Maker wanted those of certain destinies to simply accept them, and do their best with what they have been given.

She doesn’t know what to do, and Anora is still gazing at her with her huge blue eyes—physically, almost identical to Gwen’s—so she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind, the thing that always worked in noble circles. Arranged marriage.

Anora is surprised, but not opposed. Gwen, meanwhile, is shocked that her dumb idea had any merit at all.

The Landsmeet is tomorrow. Somehow, they will have to win it, and Gwen, sickened at the thought, has no idea how.

**18\. renege**

_side a_

Tabris stands over her defeated foe. He is a fine human lord, in fine silver armor, and he carries a very large sword. Standing, Tabris would come to Loghain’s shoulder—but he is not standing now. He is fallen, defeated, before her. Her, a woman short even for an elf, armed with two little daggers and her wits.

Fighting underhandedly from the shadows was one thing, but a duel before a courtly audience was quite another.

Tabris has won. She’s won over the court with her silver tongue, and beaten the great Hero of River Dane, and now his life is in her hands. She just about preens.

Riordan’s words make her hesitate. Tabris is clever and cunning and she does _not_ waste resources.

Alistair argues. Vehemently. With more rage than she has ever seen him wield. She looks at him, then, taken aback by his ferocity, and thinks that perhaps he might have understood her after all.

But it’s too late now.

She thinks to let him do the execution himself. To know the sweet bite of revenge. But ultimately it is her hand that raises the blade.

Alistair is many things, but more than anything else he is a good person. Tabris, meanwhile, is not, and she can afford this.

She has a moment of regret, as Anora covers her face and sobs, and for a moment Loghain reminds her of Cyrion—but the moment passes, and so does he.

Tabris is a murderer, simple and true, and this execution is but another kill. No more, no less.

And then they are all looking to her to decide the fate of Ferelden’s crown. Kingmaking is becoming something of a hobby of hers, it seems.

She stands before the assembled court, an elf they would have spat upon, and holds all their fates in her hands. The fools. The idiots. How she hates them. How she vies for their approval.

She is about to pronounce the marriage. It is the best choice, the best future for Ferelden. She herself had suggested it. Because clever, cunning Tabris can always see the best path.

But somehow the words just won’t come out from behind her teeth.

After all, she thinks, they are all looking to _her._ She’s the one in charge here. As she should be! Whatever she says…goes.

She fingers her silverite dagger, wiping the poison from it with one gloved finger. Her gaze flicks to Arl Eamon, to the blood on the floor, to Alistair and the invisible sword above his head, to Anora and her wide blue eyes that are nothing and everything like Tabris’s.

She lifts her chin and addresses the court. “Anora shall rule.”

And, because she enjoys dramatics, she turns and walks back out the chamber doors.

_side b_

Gwen stands before a defeated foe. He is like an aged mirror of her. Pale and dark-haired, decked in heavy silver, wielding heavy blades. The fight had been difficult, but Gwen is younger and more practiced, and it is she that stands victorious.

It seems that fighting is the only thing she is any good at anymore. She couldn’t convince anyone of the truth. It had to turn to violence instead. Several people had lain dead before the Landsmeet chamber had settled. Gwen’s fault. Again. Because she hadn’t been good enough.

Gwen thinks, again, of how tired she is. Her armor sits so heavily on her shoulders. The ancestral Cousland blade is nearly falling from her fingers. She thinks, again, of how desperately she wishes to never raise it again.

When Riordan gives her the excuse, she grasps at it like a lifeline.

“ _What?!”_

It’s Alistair’s voice, contorted with more anger and hatred than she has ever heard in it before.

“Kill him already!”

Gwen turns her head slowly to look at him. She shakes it, slightly. “No.”

He can’t believe it. He’s staring at her, waiting for the illusion to shatter. “He’s a traitor! He left our brothers to die on the field, and hunted us like criminals, and you want to spare him?”

She has never seen his lip curl like that. She has never seen such fire in his eyes.

“Revenge won’t make you feel any better,” she says, very quietly _. And it won’t bring them back.  
_

“This isn’t about revenge.” He grits his teeth. “And you don’t know that.”

“But I do.”

But Gwen is realizing that perhaps, after all, she doesn’t. Perhaps if a man like Alistair can wish so ardently for the death of another, perhaps it truly would make him feel better. Perhaps she has never known him at all. Perhaps the kindred spirit she has seen within him is…only an illusion, after all.

“After everything we’ve been through.” There’s desperation in his voice. He’s begging. She wonders for a brief moment if he still loves her, if he has loved her all this time. “After all we fought for. You’re sparing him? I'm begging, Cousland, kill him.”

Gwen straightens her back, and turns to face him entirely. No matter how heavy the armor lays, no matter the burdens, on this she will not yield. “No,” she says again.

She is not Lady Cousland, she is not Gwenivere of Highever, she is no great lady to play games with lives as though they were pieces. She is Gwen, and she won’t kill if she need not.

He looks at her with such hatred, such contempt. She can’t even _imagine_ feeling such hatred. Within barely the space of a minute, he is gone, and Anora is wanting to execute him, and Gwen is begging her not to.

He’s gone. She keeps staring at the doors, expecting him to come back, scarcely believing it. Gone.

“Well,” Anora is saying smugly. “That certainly makes the choice of ruler easier, doesn’t it?”

It is only a moment, but in that moment, Gwen _despises_ her. Perhaps, she thinks, she can imagine such hatred after all.

But the moment passes. Anora is done with her speech. Gwen bows her head and walks out of the chamber doors, still half-expecting to find Alistair waiting there for her.

 

**19\. ritual**

_side a_

When Tabris hears Riordan pronounce their fate, she swears and throws one of her blades to the ground. It clatters.

“What?!” she demands. “You’re fucking me, right? After all that, one of us has to die?”

Riordan assures her that he will be the one to do it.

Tabris doesn’t buy it. It’s not a safe investment. A hundred things—a thousand things—could go wrong before then. Tabris is too clever to take that chance. She _won’t._

Suddenly she is just as fuming and ineffectual as she was a year ago. “This isn’t fucking _fair,”_ she hisses.

It’s news to Alistair, too, but he doesn’t even seem to protest. His face is stony and unchanged. “We’d better get some rest,” he mumbles, and turns to leave. For a split second, his mournful gaze meets hers, and it’s like a knife in her heart.

She lets him go without protest, numb, overcome with breathless vertigo. She picks up her sword and storms out.

She ought to sleep. There’s a long march tomorrow. A battle to fight.

She _cannot_ settle down.

And then Morrigan beckons her forth, and makes her offer. Tabris doesn’t even let her finish her speech.

“You don’t need Alistair for this,” she tells her, moving forward. “I’ll do just fine.”

It’s quick, and Tabris wishes she could have enjoyed it—Morrigan is very beautiful, and Tabris had once woken naked in her bed—but her mind is elsewhere completely. Afterward, she stumbles out, head spinning.

Her frenzied spirit has calmed somewhat, but there remains a roiling in her gut. She walks the entire length of Redcliffe castle thrice over before she passes by Alistair’s room for the third time. She hesitates a moment, staring at the doorknob as though it’s going to bite. Finally, she knocks, but doesn’t bother waiting for an answer before barging in.

Alistair isn’t sleeping either. He’s removed most of his armor, and is now mindlessly turning a worry token over and over in his hands. He looks up at her.

They haven’t had a civil conversation since before the alienage. “Tabris,” he says quietly, and looks away.

There’s a lump in her throat, making it hard to breathe. _Alrian,_ she wants to say. _M_ _y name is Alrian._

Could she possibly have come so far, defied queens and teyrns and the Maker Himself to lose everything to her own damned inability to speak?

But she has to explain to him. She has to tell him—about the Ritual, about how she—about everything.

“Alistair, I—” But the words, as usual, don’t come. Her silver tongue always turns to lead around him. She sags, crossing her arms across her stomach. She hopes she doesn’t look and smell too obviously of sex. “I can’t sleep.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, at first, but then all at once he softens like butter left in the sun. He opens his arms. She goes to him, sitting beside him, thigh-to-thigh. She leans her head on his shoulder, and he puts his arms around her.

She’ll explain in the morning. She couldn’t possibly _not_ tell him. He is her partner, the one she can rely on. She could hardly keep it from him. But for the moment she only wants to feel warmth and softness, and finally feel her eyes slip closed.

_side b_

When Gwen hears that she may die, she hardly even feels surprised. She feels dead already.

Losing Alistair felt like losing a limb. She keeps turning to ask his opinion, and finding no one there. It’s like perpetually thinking there’s one more step on the staircase than there really is, and Gwen keeps stumbling.

She has no real opinion of Loghain. She’s talked to him a little, and discovered a little about him. He loves Ferelden. He likes maps, and adores his daughter. He’d loved his wife, and King Maric. He says she reminds him of Maric, and Gwen hardly sees how it matters.

She thanks Riordan for the information, and wanders out of the chamber.

She wants to find Zevran. She wants to be held and comforted. She wants him to run his fingers through her hair and call her _amora_ and let her imagine that he loves her. But they haven’t had a proper conversation since that stupid incident with the earring. The nearest they’d come was after his furious rescue at Fort Drakon, accompanied by Oghren of all people. He’d been bloodstained, furious, and had held her face in his hands so fiercely, begging to know that she was alright. But after that, everything had happened so fast...

It probably isn’t as big a deal as she’s making it out to be, but somehow it doesn’t matter. Her heavy feet take her right past his chambers.

Perhaps it won’t be so bad, the dying. After all, isn’t she dying already? Is that not what it means to be a Grey Warden? In death, sacrifice? Her corrupted blood will kill her, sooner or later. Probably sooner. Only strong wardens get the full thirty years, Gwen expects.

She’s known this, all along, but being a Warden alone is infinitely more difficult than being a warden with Alistair.

When Morrigan makes her offer, Gwen isn’t sure what to say. It sounds like blood magic. Morrigan is one of Gwen’s dearest friends, and she would have done anything for her, but this…What’s the point of it? Unleashing something like an archdemon soul on an innocent child, when Gwen can simply die and let the harm end there?

Morrigan is angry. Morrigan is hissing vile, manipulative things. She is mentioning Zevran as though she is more to him than a passing moment. Gwen winces, but by this point she is hardly surprised. She tells her that she’ll think about it.

She doesn’t really intend to think about it, or, hopefully, about anything else.

Zevran is lurking just beside the door, so still she doesn’t notice him until he moves.

She jumps a foot in the air, clanking. “Zev!” she says, sighing as her heart thumps. “You scared me.”

“So,” he says crisply. “You avoid me all this time, and now you intend to throw your life away, when there is no need?”

“How did you know I was there?”

The assassin scoffs. “My dear warden, you are many things, but quiet is not one of them. The Maker himself could hear you stomping about in that armor. You should really take it off more often. It doesn’t look easy to wear.”

She gives him a watery smile. “Right. Silly of me.” She casts her eyes to the floor, but the problem with that is Zevran is between her and the floor.

“You are avoiding the matter.”

She bites her lip.

“Gwen.” There is something in his voice.

“Zev, please.” She looks at him, finally. “It’s really better this way. I’m finally being dutiful, like I never had the guts to be before. Besides, there’s no reason to think Riordan will fail.” She tries a smile. “It will be fine.”

He’s furious. “It will _not_ be fine. You speak of throwing away your life as though it does not matter to anyone.”

She hadn’t exactly thought of it that way. But now that she thinks of it…her family is dead. Alistair is gone. Morrigan, it seems, has only ever had ulterior motives in their friendship. Gwen has other friends, it’s true, but she is beginning to think she is cursed  to bring misfortune upon all who she loves. She doesn’t even want to live to see what kind of misfortune.

Flower will be sad, maybe, but Flower’s a smart dog. He’ll know how to move on from his no-good mistress.

“Braska!” He seizes her by the forearms, interrupting her thoughts. “What do I have to tell you to convince you not to do this?”

She stares at him, uncomprehending. His eyes are very warm and very golden, and very full of…something.

He lets her go, sagging. “Cruel to the end,” he mutters. He shakes his golden head, bitter, and finally, he turns away from her.

Unexpectedly, Gwen’s heart leaps into her throat. She reaches out to grasp his shoulder. “Zev, wait,” she says in desperation. “Wait, I’ll—I’ll talk to Loghain. M-maybe he’ll do it. Zev, don’t go, please.”

He doesn’t go. He lifts his chin, and nods brusquely, once. “Good,” he says, exhaling. “Good.”

 

**20\. rally**

_side a_

A night of near no sleep, and three days march. Tabris feels wide awake.

Everyone is walking by her one by one, clasping her hands, clapping her on the shoulders, laughing and crying and encouraging. Tabris feels a full-measured tightness in her throat that feels not exactly Bad.

They will overcome. She knows they will.

After all, she thinks, looking at Morrigan. She cheated. She hedged her bets.

Finally Alistair is facing her. She lifts her chin to him, and not only because he’s so damn tall.

“With me,” she says clasping his hand.

He takes her hand with both of his. They’re so stupidly large. How does he get by with them? He smiles. Even in darkness, he smiles like the sun. “Always.”

She had thought about leaving him behind. To hedge her bets further. To make absolute sure that if anyone died, it would not be him. Not Alistair, who is a good person, who doesn’t deserve any of this. If anyone ought to risk death, it ought be Tabris. In a burst of glory, in a final bitter proof of her own worth.

But Tabris is not going to die. Tabris is cunning. Tabris _cheats._

And Tabris trusts Alistair too much. They’re a team, and she won’t go into this one alone.

(She will kiss him on the steps of Fort Drakon, blood-spattered and filthy, and while it is her hand that strikes down the archdemon and her exhausted, unconscious body that hits the ground afterwards, she has never been alone.)

_side b_

A night of near no sleep, and three days’ march. Gwen is near delirious with exhaustion.

Her friends are speaking to her as though this is goodbye. As though this is the last chance they’ll get.  As though this is the end.

Gwen doesn’t resist the tears. She doesn’t cry like a noble warrior, either. She cries like a snotty, red-faced little girl.

Maybe she can embarrass the archdemon into running away.

When Zevran faces her, she tries to turn the waterworks off. It’s just getting embarrassing.

But then his brows furrow again, his eyes full of that Something. “You do not want me by your side?”

She bursts into tears, again. “No, no, of course I do! _Please_ understand, first it was—m-my whole family, and then all the wardens, and then I drove Alistair away t-too and now I don’t even know what’s _happened_ to him.” She has to pause to sob, a little. “I c-can’t handle losing you, too, I _can’t,_ I’m not strong enough, Zev, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

He stands on tiptoe and pulls her down to kiss her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth, despite how incredibly gross she must be right now. “For you, I would storm the black city itself,” he says. “Never doubt it.”

For a shining moment, Gwen doesn’t.

(Gwen will ascend Fort Drakon not quite alone, but still it will feel that way. When she strikes down the archdemon, it is her silver-gloved hand and her silverite sword that does the deed. Exhausted blackness  will eat at the corners of her vision, and she can’t help but imagine the cruel irony of dying, after all, and living forever in memory for an act of violence. **)**


	5. resolving

**21\. revive**

_side a_

Tabris wakes with the worst kink in her neck. She groans, wiping the drool from the corner of her mouth, and tries to turn over in bed, only to find that she can’t, because someone’s holding onto her hand too tightly to let it slip out easily. Her eyes crack open. It’s light enough in the room to see Alistair’s sandy head on the pillow beside hers.

She blinks, with her seeing eyes, staring at her living body. Alive. Alive! It worked, it fucking worked!

Everyone’s there, in the modest guest room she had in Arl Eamon’s Denerim estate. Someone’s dragged beds and cots in to have room for everyone. Except Sten, who’s refused his, and is leaning closed-eyed against the wall. Morrigan is gone, but there is a raven in the windowsill that Tabris eyes suspiciously. Alistair isn’t in his bed nearby, either. He was sprawled half on her bed, half on the floor.

You’ll throw out your back that way, she chides mentally.

She sits up and looks around. “Hey, assholes,” she says loudly. “Don’t you know it’s morning?”

And while that evening she will get messily, carousingly drunk, and cry openly and tell each and every one of her companions how dear they are to her and how very much they mean to her, this morning she will tolerate the embraces with pretended grump and her usual dismissive character.

Eventually everyone trickles out. When Tabris looks over to the windowsill, the raven is gone, and she is suddenly no longer quite sure she saw it at all.

Alistair is the only one left.

They sit side by side, like the night before the march,  and neither can find it within them to break the silence.

They still haven’t talked properly since her outburst in Denerim. They aren’t even talking now.

Her mind and heart is racing. He’s not king. They’re not dead. The Blight is over. Even with a lifetime cut short, it will be the same lifetime. There’s a future there. A real future.

Tabris has never much imagined herself with a future. In the alienage, it wasn’t something you could afford. You thought about the next day, and the one after that, and you didn’t make big plans. Futures were not things allotted to elves.

“Look, I,” she manages finally, clearing her throat. “I’m not really good with words.”

“Oh, well,” he responds, so quickly that he must have been waiting for it. “That’s quite alright. I talk plenty for the both of us. Even if mostly I tell bad jokes.”

“They’re not _that_ bad. Remember the poet-tree?”

They snicker over that, and a few other things, until the sun has risen high enough that they really ought to get dressed and leave the room.

The conversation trickles to a halt, and now it is his turn to cough awkwardly. “Listen…Tabris—”

“Alrian,” she says suddenly.

“It’s my first name,” she explains at his questioning look. “Tabris is a surname. I…guess I never told you that. Just don’t say that it’s as beautiful as I am or I’ll strangle you.”

“You couldn’t reach.”

“I’ll _jump.”_

“Hm, you can jump pretty high. Alright, I won’t say it, but I’ll be thinking it. Loudly. A _lot.”_

She turns away to hide her smile. “Well. Anyway. You can call me that. If you want. When we’re alone. Quietly.”

“Alrian,” he says, quietly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Like that. That’s alright.” She decides, then, that she trusts her name in his mouth.

She stands and stretches. “So we’d better get going, huh? Lot’s to do.”

“Oh, yes. You know they’re calling you the Hero of Ferelden?”

Tabris stares gobsmacked, then grins. “ _Are_ they now! Hah! Well, that sure showed them, huh? The Hero of _all Ferelden,_ and she’s an elf! Ooh, I hope I get a statue. And a parade.”

“I swear, my lady,” he says seriously, “that I shall most ardently pursue that endeavor. For you.”

“And you get a statue too! And a _second_ parade! Oho, I am _never_ letting these jerks forget who saved them.”

“Course you won’t! Like you said, lots to do, isn’t there?”

There _is_ a lot to do. They’re the last wardens in Ferelden, and damned if Tabris is going to let Anora get away with anything cheeky when Tabris was the one who put her ass on the Ferelden throne, and they never had that dinner at Cyrion’s house, and her head is spinning just to think of it.

But in a good way. Definitely a good way.

 

_side b_

Gwen comes close to consciousness several times, and every one of them, thinks better of it, and sinks back into the blackness.

When she finally wakes for good, it’s a bit of a disappointment. The ritual worked, then. Morrigan has her archdemon spawn, and Gwen lives.

She stares at a silken canopy above her. In the dim light she can tell she is in some fancy guest room, fitting for a great and noble hero. The soft sheets and goose down pillow feel wrong. She’s too used to bedrolls on the hard ground. She’d spent so much of that journey anxious and worried and crying or near-crying, but she’d been free. She’d had friends.

You still have them, she thought irritably at herself, squeezing her eyes shut tight. At very least, she still has Flower, curled up at the end of the bed. At least she can count on the mabari.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” a voice says, and then twitches aside the heavy curtains, allowing heavy sunlight to pour in. Zevran. He looks really wonderful, framed in the sunlit window like that. Nothing like moon-pale Gwen.

“Zev?” she mumbles deliriously.

“Correct,” he says cheerfully. “You’ve been asleep for a few days.”

Her eyes widen. “Days? Really?”

He nods. “Days.” A pause. “You know, you nearly gave certain members of our company quite a fright. Lying next to that absurd dragon as though slain. I—we feared the worst.”

She shakes her head. “Just tired. Really, really tired.”

He looks at her, hands on his hips, for a long moment. “Such lovely hair, and you with three straight days of behead. Here, let me fix it for you.”  He climbs right into the bed with her and starts untangling the snarls with his fingers. She lets him, resisting the urge to sigh. Every part of her aches. Maybe he’ll decide on another massage soon.

“Where’s everyone else?”

“They were here for a while,” he says, “but you just slept and slept. But they’ve been visiting. Leliana’s sung a few times.” He pauses. “You know, they’re calling you the Hero of Ferelden out there?”

Gwen groans. “You’re joking.”

“Ah, no. Not this time.”

She ought to feel triumphant, but somehow the feeling is absent. She just feels tired. She’ll have to go out and face everyone soon, be their Hero of Ferelden. They’ll act as though she did it all herself. Without even a second warden to stand by her, and share the burden of the credit.

“You don’t seem very enthused at the thought.”

“I’m not.”

“Ah, hm. Well, I believe I have a solution. Antiva is very nice this time of year. Now that we’ve no pressing business in this cold, dog-smelling country, perhaps we ought to make ourselves scarce?”

“Ferelden is nice,” she says defensively. “And dogs don’t smell _that_ bad. And Flower is a _good_ dog.” Then his words sink in. “You mean—go with you?”

“I should think that part would be obvious.”

Antiva. Sun-drenched docks and open skies and warmth, and blessed anonymity. It sounds like something out of a dream.

But then Gwen remembers the earring.

“I don’t know,” she replies, haltingly.

There is a long and heavy pause, and Zevran’s fingers stop working their way through her hair. For a moment she’s sure she’s messed it all up again. Surely she’s going to be listed as a public menace soon, Hero or not.

And then he is turning her face gently to his, and he is saying—such things to her, such things that she never imagined anyone might say of her, let alone _Zevran._ It’s so much. Surely she’s red from head to toe—very visibly, in her nightclothes.

It’s like opening a floodgate, or a heavy curtain at midday. Something other than sunlight warms her cold skin.

Gwen has grown so used to life as a girl without a future, a doomed corrupted thing, that the one blooming before her eyes might be the most miraculous thing she’s encountered as yet.

“An engagement earring,” she says, and giggles like a girl. “That’s so—unconventional! Oh, can you imagine the scandal? The last of the noble Couslands, a heroic Warden, disappears to Antiva with an elven assassin. It practically sounds like a made-up court rumor, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, perhaps we should start some other rumors alongside that one. Just to spice things up, no?”

She grins, thinking of some exciting rumors to spread, but then groans. “Ugh, but they’re expecting me out there, aren’t they? I’ve got to put that blasted armor back on.”

"Well--not if you don't want to. You are a hero now, no? You can do as you please."

"What I _please_ is to be gone already."

"Excellent idea. Shall I pack your things for you, or will we buy everything new in Antiva City? I doubt we will be able to sneak out the door--but the window, yes? We can catch a cart to Amaranthine, and then a ship to my country."

"What?" Gwen is suddenly wide awake and full of lightning. "But--they're expecting me--I've got a duty--"

"Who cares?"

"I haven't said goodbye to anyone--"

"We'll invite them. We shall have a marvelous garden party by the sea and drink Oghren's horrible brandy and reminisce. Si, _amora?"_

"Oh, Maker," Gwen snorts and gets out of bed, "just call me Gwen, won't you?"

She can't believe she's about to jump out the window in her nightgown with her assassin lover, to run away and get married in Antiva.

The sun is shining, and Gwen feels weak and overwhelmed.

But in a good way, this time. Definitely a good way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was gonna write a short thing in the notes about what ultimately happened to these two but  
> nahhhh  
> ill tell if someone asks tho

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://gayspacejew.tumblr.com/)   
>  [my oc blog](http://piile-of-dragon-filth.tumblr.com/)


End file.
